http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=58000
World AIDS Day Focuses Spotlight On Links Between Sexual Violence, Broken Justice Systems And HIV/AIDS Pandemic
02 Dec 2006 In recognition of World AIDS Day, International Justice Mission calls upon the U.S. and other international donors to help AIDS-burdened countries in Africa build judicial capacity to investigate and prosecute sexual violence against women and girls.
"Rape is an HIV risk factor for tens of millions of African women and children and yet in many AIDS-burdened countries public justice systems are broken or virtually inaccessible to poor girls and women," says Holly Burkhalter, vice president of government relations at International Justice Mission, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights organization that strives to bring immediate relief to victims of oppression, slavery, trafficking and violence while pursuing prosecution for perpetrators.
"Defeating the AIDS pandemic requires that African women and girls have the right to protection under their own countries' laws. In addition to continuing successful campaigns to combat HIV/AIDS, these countries need hands-on help in getting rapists and batterers off the street and into jail."Burkhalter cites a June 2005 initiative announced by President Bush -- the "Women's Justice and Empowerment in Africa" program -- that pledged $55 million over three years to showcase successes in four African countries (Benin, Zambia, Kenya and South Africa) in creating judicial capacity to address sexual violence and increase services to victims.
Burkhalter notes that to date, only $1.2 million has been spent (in 2005), less than 3% of the money pledged in the program. No funds were used in 2006. (Initiative: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/06/20050630-5.html)"We urge the administration to fully implement the Women's Justice and Empowerment in Africa program with the same effectiveness as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). That program's success demonstrates how quickly and effectively billions of dollars in foreign aid can be mobilized if an issue is prioritized.
It is past time to make protection from rape, child abuse, and domestic violence that kind of a priority," added Burkhalter.An international consensus has emerged that violence and degradation of women and girls are key factors in the rapid spread of HIV among this group; and yet, investment in protection for children and women is not on the international radar screen, says IJM. The organization proposes a "build it as we go" approach to strengthening national judiciaries in AIDS-burdened Africa. This includes ramping up investigations, prosecutions and convictions from the dozens to the hundreds, then thousands, while simultaneously training, equipping and recruiting police, prosecutors and judges.
As in the case of health systems, the greatest need of judiciaries is for skilled human resources, according to IJM. Local police need training, management, salary support and deployment to underserved rural villages and towns. Scaling up of rape cases requires DNA labs, rape test kits, witness protection capacity, referral systems, vehicles and computers. Corrupt or abusive police and judicial staff should be fired and prosecuted; incentives and benefits should reward excellence and confer prestige on police and prosecutors who take on sexual violence."When it comes to women and HIV, access to justice has to be considered AIDS prevention," added Burkhalter. "Functioning judicial systems are the next frontier in confronting the AIDS pandemic and preventing its spread."
About International Justice Mission
International Justice Mission is a human rights organization that brings immediate relief to victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery and oppression. A multi-national team of lawyers and law enforcement professionals conduct criminal investigations and collect evidence to relieve victims and bring perpetrators to justice, and IJM social workers secure appropriate aftercare for victims of abuse. IJM was founded by Gary Haugen who was the Officer in Charge of the U.N. investigation into the Rwandan genocide. IJM has 11 overseas offices in Africa, Latin America and Asia.International Justice Missionhttp://www.ijm.org
Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=58000
“AIDS prevention”
Showing posts with label HIV/AIDS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HIV/AIDS. Show all posts
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Lending to Women Makes Good Business Sense -- and Lifts Up Whole Communities
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1218
Published: July 27, 2005 in Knowledge@Wharton
Attending a conference on women's health and safety at the global level, one might expect to hear reports from doctors and scientists talking about new technologies and medications to address specific health issues. If only it were that simple. Instead, participants at the recent "Penn Summit: Safe Womanhood in an Unsafe World," organized by the Schools of Nursing and Medicine, heard a complex story of poverty, illiteracy, limited access to the formal economy and inadequate property rights -- some of the conditions that most directly affect women's health and their ability to care for themselves and their families. It is among these seemingly ancillary problems, said Summit speakers, that we will find solutions to the greatest health challenges facing women today.
Poverty and Illiteracy: A Lethal Combination
When asked to pinpoint the most detrimental causes of ill health among women, speaker May Rihani, director of the Global Learning Group and Center for Gender Equity, Academy for Educational Development, said that without doubt it is the combination of illiteracy and poverty. As such, said Rihani, "girls' education at the primary and secondary level might just be the most powerful strategy to improve the socioeconomic environments in which women live, and improve the health of women and their families." She provided the audience with statistics from numerous studies that linked education to better health:
• A 63-country study showed that higher education levels for women increased productive farming and accounted for 43% of the decline in malnutrition achieved between 1970 and 1995.
• In Africa, children of mothers who receive five years of primary education are 45% more likely to live beyond the age of 5.
• Multi-country data show that educated mothers are about 50% more likely to immunize their children than uneducated mothers.
She also presented statistics that show the effects of illiteracy and lack of education:
• Countries with lower than 20% of girls enrolled in secondary school have the highest rates of teen birth rates.
• A study from Zambia finds that AIDS spreads twice as fast among undereducated girls.
• A study in Brazil shows that illiterate women have an average of 6 children, while literate women have an average of 2.5.
Lack of education, coupled with poverty, sets up a secondary problem - that of women being forced to seek financial stability through unsafe means. Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the International Center for Research on Women, told Summit participants that the asset gap, particularly with land ownership, places women in extremely precarious financial situations.
Statistics of land ownership among women in many countries, she reported, is dismally low. In Brazil, just 11% of women own land; in Pakistan that figure is only 3%. "The asset gap pushes women into the informal sector," said Rao Gupta. "This means insecure, low-paying jobs -- the kind of work that is not protected by laws or governments." By far the greatest threat, agreed participants, is the often inevitable slide into prostitution.
"Far from being the oldest profession in the world," said speaker Esohe Aghatise, executive director of Associazione Iroko Onlus, a group in Italy that addresses human trafficking, "prostitution is the oldest form of oppression in the world." Laura Lederer, a senior advisor with the U.S. State Department, said that their research has uncovered numerous health issues associated with women involved in the sex trade: 64% had been threatened by a weapon, 80% had substance abuse problems, and 68% suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ameporn Ratinthorn, a member of the nursing faculty at Siriraj Mahidol University in Thailand, has worked directly with prostitutes. She reported that among nearly all of the prostitutes she spoke with during a recent research study, economic instability and lack of education were the two key factors leading women to the sex trade. The portrait of a prostitute, at least in the area of Thailand where Ratinthorn conducted her research, is that of a woman with little education (65% had less than six years of formal education), who is a mother (60% have children), is the sole bread winner in the family (if there is a husband, he tends to be absent), is in debt, and whose family has at least one member who is sick and unable to work.
What these women tend to have in common, said Ratinthorn, is that they are highly economically disadvantaged and at the same time have enormous family responsibilities. Not surprisingly, the women in Ratinthorn's study suffered from high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and had suffered physical injury and even death due to violence by customers, partners, pimps, and even law enforcement personnel.
Opening Doors to Wealth Generation
While women are often kept out of the formal economy, they have proven -- when given a chance -- to be highly adept at improving their financial situations and in turn, the well-being of their families.
This fact was the catalyst for the creation of microfinance organizations more than 20 years ago. As C. K. Prahalad notes in his book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, "Women are central to the entire development process. They are also at the vanguard of social transformation." He attributes the success of Grameen Bank, a microfinance pioneer in Bangladesh, to its policy of lending only to women. Indeed, the default rate at the Grameen Bank is less than 1.5%.
Speaker Hans Dellien, manager of microlending services for Women's World Banking, said that investing in women "is a secure bet." And the connection to women's health is clear. "If you empower women through economic means, they will invest in their children (by sending them to school) and in their households. Good health follows."
WWB's web site answers the question of "Why lend to women?" this way:
• Women are major actors in the global economy. Women's roles as the farmers, traders, and informal sector industrialists are major and often overlooked.
• Global experience with microlending demonstrates that women are better credit risks than men, and that low-income entrepreneurs have higher repayment rates than large bank clients.
• Investing in low-income women entrepreneurs is a highly efficient means to achieve economic and social objectives. Women manage household finances in most of the developing world. As more cash and assets get into the hands of women, most of these earnings are spent on food, medicine and schoolbooks for their children.
• Women tend to be honest, practical and reliable. This results in a low percentage of business failures and loan defaults among women business owners.
Dellien said that he and his colleagues within WWB, which doesn't lend money but serves as an advocate and provides technical assistance for microfinance, spend a lot of time explaining to banks and potential lenders that this isn't charity, but rather a highly effective, smart way to invest resources.
That idea is at the core of Prahalad's book, which notes that more than 4 billion people live at the bottom of the pyramid on less than $2 per day. Rather than pity them or treat them like "poor" people, imagine what we could do if we involve and respect them by opening doors to financial stability, suggests the author. This kind of limited thinking -- that poor people are all the same -- held back even microfinancing organizations, added Dellien. "Twenty years ago we had a one-product-fits-all approach." Groups like his eventually began to see that their clients, though all poor, had very different situations.
"Our clients were running small, medium, and large enterprises," he said, "which means they had different financing needs." That realization has led to a variety of new products and services, which Dellien hopes will soon include health insurance and pension funds. By recognizing the power at the bottom of the pyramid, microfinancing organizations have moved their focus from just helping women subsist to helping them (and in turn, their families) create long-term financial stability.
As Judith Rodin, past president of Penn and current president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said in her welcoming remarks at the Summit, "This is a multidisciplinary problem .... Education and employment affect women's health." That theme played out during the two-day summit where participants heard over and over that a woman's economic position directly affects her ability to pay for needed improvements in health, housing and education; impacts her power and status in the family and community; and plays a major role in her ability to act against violence directed toward herself and her family.
Published: July 27, 2005 in Knowledge@Wharton
Attending a conference on women's health and safety at the global level, one might expect to hear reports from doctors and scientists talking about new technologies and medications to address specific health issues. If only it were that simple. Instead, participants at the recent "Penn Summit: Safe Womanhood in an Unsafe World," organized by the Schools of Nursing and Medicine, heard a complex story of poverty, illiteracy, limited access to the formal economy and inadequate property rights -- some of the conditions that most directly affect women's health and their ability to care for themselves and their families. It is among these seemingly ancillary problems, said Summit speakers, that we will find solutions to the greatest health challenges facing women today.
Poverty and Illiteracy: A Lethal Combination
When asked to pinpoint the most detrimental causes of ill health among women, speaker May Rihani, director of the Global Learning Group and Center for Gender Equity, Academy for Educational Development, said that without doubt it is the combination of illiteracy and poverty. As such, said Rihani, "girls' education at the primary and secondary level might just be the most powerful strategy to improve the socioeconomic environments in which women live, and improve the health of women and their families." She provided the audience with statistics from numerous studies that linked education to better health:
• A 63-country study showed that higher education levels for women increased productive farming and accounted for 43% of the decline in malnutrition achieved between 1970 and 1995.
• In Africa, children of mothers who receive five years of primary education are 45% more likely to live beyond the age of 5.
• Multi-country data show that educated mothers are about 50% more likely to immunize their children than uneducated mothers.
She also presented statistics that show the effects of illiteracy and lack of education:
• Countries with lower than 20% of girls enrolled in secondary school have the highest rates of teen birth rates.
• A study from Zambia finds that AIDS spreads twice as fast among undereducated girls.
• A study in Brazil shows that illiterate women have an average of 6 children, while literate women have an average of 2.5.
Lack of education, coupled with poverty, sets up a secondary problem - that of women being forced to seek financial stability through unsafe means. Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the International Center for Research on Women, told Summit participants that the asset gap, particularly with land ownership, places women in extremely precarious financial situations.
Statistics of land ownership among women in many countries, she reported, is dismally low. In Brazil, just 11% of women own land; in Pakistan that figure is only 3%. "The asset gap pushes women into the informal sector," said Rao Gupta. "This means insecure, low-paying jobs -- the kind of work that is not protected by laws or governments." By far the greatest threat, agreed participants, is the often inevitable slide into prostitution.
"Far from being the oldest profession in the world," said speaker Esohe Aghatise, executive director of Associazione Iroko Onlus, a group in Italy that addresses human trafficking, "prostitution is the oldest form of oppression in the world." Laura Lederer, a senior advisor with the U.S. State Department, said that their research has uncovered numerous health issues associated with women involved in the sex trade: 64% had been threatened by a weapon, 80% had substance abuse problems, and 68% suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ameporn Ratinthorn, a member of the nursing faculty at Siriraj Mahidol University in Thailand, has worked directly with prostitutes. She reported that among nearly all of the prostitutes she spoke with during a recent research study, economic instability and lack of education were the two key factors leading women to the sex trade. The portrait of a prostitute, at least in the area of Thailand where Ratinthorn conducted her research, is that of a woman with little education (65% had less than six years of formal education), who is a mother (60% have children), is the sole bread winner in the family (if there is a husband, he tends to be absent), is in debt, and whose family has at least one member who is sick and unable to work.
What these women tend to have in common, said Ratinthorn, is that they are highly economically disadvantaged and at the same time have enormous family responsibilities. Not surprisingly, the women in Ratinthorn's study suffered from high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and had suffered physical injury and even death due to violence by customers, partners, pimps, and even law enforcement personnel.
Opening Doors to Wealth Generation
While women are often kept out of the formal economy, they have proven -- when given a chance -- to be highly adept at improving their financial situations and in turn, the well-being of their families.
This fact was the catalyst for the creation of microfinance organizations more than 20 years ago. As C. K. Prahalad notes in his book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, "Women are central to the entire development process. They are also at the vanguard of social transformation." He attributes the success of Grameen Bank, a microfinance pioneer in Bangladesh, to its policy of lending only to women. Indeed, the default rate at the Grameen Bank is less than 1.5%.
Speaker Hans Dellien, manager of microlending services for Women's World Banking, said that investing in women "is a secure bet." And the connection to women's health is clear. "If you empower women through economic means, they will invest in their children (by sending them to school) and in their households. Good health follows."
WWB's web site answers the question of "Why lend to women?" this way:
• Women are major actors in the global economy. Women's roles as the farmers, traders, and informal sector industrialists are major and often overlooked.
• Global experience with microlending demonstrates that women are better credit risks than men, and that low-income entrepreneurs have higher repayment rates than large bank clients.
• Investing in low-income women entrepreneurs is a highly efficient means to achieve economic and social objectives. Women manage household finances in most of the developing world. As more cash and assets get into the hands of women, most of these earnings are spent on food, medicine and schoolbooks for their children.
• Women tend to be honest, practical and reliable. This results in a low percentage of business failures and loan defaults among women business owners.
Dellien said that he and his colleagues within WWB, which doesn't lend money but serves as an advocate and provides technical assistance for microfinance, spend a lot of time explaining to banks and potential lenders that this isn't charity, but rather a highly effective, smart way to invest resources.
That idea is at the core of Prahalad's book, which notes that more than 4 billion people live at the bottom of the pyramid on less than $2 per day. Rather than pity them or treat them like "poor" people, imagine what we could do if we involve and respect them by opening doors to financial stability, suggests the author. This kind of limited thinking -- that poor people are all the same -- held back even microfinancing organizations, added Dellien. "Twenty years ago we had a one-product-fits-all approach." Groups like his eventually began to see that their clients, though all poor, had very different situations.
"Our clients were running small, medium, and large enterprises," he said, "which means they had different financing needs." That realization has led to a variety of new products and services, which Dellien hopes will soon include health insurance and pension funds. By recognizing the power at the bottom of the pyramid, microfinancing organizations have moved their focus from just helping women subsist to helping them (and in turn, their families) create long-term financial stability.
As Judith Rodin, past president of Penn and current president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said in her welcoming remarks at the Summit, "This is a multidisciplinary problem .... Education and employment affect women's health." That theme played out during the two-day summit where participants heard over and over that a woman's economic position directly affects her ability to pay for needed improvements in health, housing and education; impacts her power and status in the family and community; and plays a major role in her ability to act against violence directed toward herself and her family.
To Have and To Hold: Women’s Property and Inheritance Rights in the Context of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa
http://www.icrw.org/docs/2004_info_haveandhold.pdf
International Center for Research on Women
Information Brief (June 2004)
In 2004, UNAIDS launched the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS to call more global attention to HIV/AIDS-related abuses of women’s and girls’ rights and to promote action to counter abuses. The Global Coalition focuses on preventing new HIV infections among women and girls, promoting equal access to HIV care and treatment, accelerating microbicides research, protecting women’s property and inheritance rights, and reducing violence against women. For each issue, the Global Coalition works through a convening agency to raise awareness and promote action. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is the convening agency for the realization of women’s and girls’ property and inheritance rights. This bulletin is based on research, undertaken for ICRW by Dr. Richard Strickland, examining the linkages between women’s property rights and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
Research and intervention strategies are just beginning to consider the role that women’s property ownership and inheritance rights might play in potentially breaking the cycle of HIV/AIDS and poverty. There is growing evidence to suggest that where women’s property and inheritance rights are upheld, women acting as heads and/or primary caregivers of HIV/AIDS-affected households are better able to manage the impact of AIDS. Additionally, preliminary evidence indicates that such rights may help prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS by promoting women’s economic security and empowerment, thereby reducing their vulnerability to domestic violence, unsafe sex, and other AIDS-related risk factors.
Obstacles to Women’s Property Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa
In sub-Saharan Africa, women are adversely affected by acute discrimination in matters of property and inheritance, and they suffer disproportionately from the effects of discriminatory and oppressive laws, customs, and traditions regarding access to and control of housing and land (COHRE 2003). This can be attributed to a range of legal, institutional, and socio-economic factors (UN-HABITAT 2002; Walker 2002; Human Rights Watch 2003b).
Legal issues may include patriarchal laws and traditions that, in effect, deny women the ability to own and inherit land. Additionally, the relationship between traditional or customary law and statutory or de jure law may allow for gaps in implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of those laws that do recognize women’s equal rights to tenure. These gaps may be exacerbated by women’s lack of awareness of their rights.
Institutional factors such as cumbersome regulatory frameworks, costly procedures, lack of information, and corruption can undermine women’s ability to claim their rights, especially where women are underrepresented in structures of local and national governance and their needs and perspectives are inadequately incorporated into policies and programs.
Socio-economic factors affecting women’s secure tenure include poverty, urbanization, domestic violence, and natural and human-made disasters. As many as 41 percent of female-headed households live below local poverty levels and lack resources to buy land or property or develop land allocated to them (UN-HABITAT 2002). Women lacking rights to rural land may migrate to urban areas in hopes of securing property there, though often with tenuous results. Violence against women is sometimes used to threaten their eviction during family disputes or to break their claim to family property upon the death of the spouse (associated with the phenomenon of property grabbing). Further complicating the picture, a variety of tenure systems, legally or customarily defined, establish how property rights and the associated responsibilities and restraints concerning property are to be distributed within societies.
...The Importance of Property Rights
Throughout the world, ownership of land, housing, and other property provides direct and indirect benefits including a secure place to live, the means to a livelihood, and a measure of wealth or capital by which additional economic resources can be leveraged (land can serve as collateral for credit, for instance). Land has long been recognized as a primary source of wealth, social status, and power, providing the basis for shelter, food, and economic activities. Access to resources such as water and to services such as sanitation and electricity, as well as the ability to make long-term investments in land and housing, are often conditioned by access to land rights (FAO 2002).
... HIV/AIDS-affected households that enjoy rights to land and property are better-positioned to cope, as they have a stable, secure environment in which to provide care as well as a resource base that can generate much needed income to help compensate for lost wages of an ill person or a caregiver who forgoes a wage-earning job, and to cover various AIDS-related costs.
Unfortunately, the benefits of land ownership that can help mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS often are simply not available to women in sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, title deeds to land or house are normally issued to male heads of household, leaving women with a lack of secure tenure in case of divorce from or death of their husband. This may lead them to endure an abusive relationship or infidelity to safeguard their access to property through their husband, rather than seeking a divorce. Efforts to promote joint titling are underway in many countries, though the practical effects of the joint title have yet to be thoroughly tested or assessed.
If widowed, women may be victimized by others (such as in-laws and their relatives) through manipulative decision-making that denies rightful inheritance. They may be forced to forfeit their assets, including their land and house, to relatives of the deceased spouse through customary practices involving property grabbing or asset stripping. Such practices, fueled increasingly by the stigma and discrimination commonly experienced by survivors of AIDS victims, leave affected households destitute and more vulnerable to further consequences of HIV/AIDS (Drimie 2002a; FAO 2003; Human Rights Watch
2003a)...
International Center for Research on Women
Information Brief (June 2004)
In 2004, UNAIDS launched the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS to call more global attention to HIV/AIDS-related abuses of women’s and girls’ rights and to promote action to counter abuses. The Global Coalition focuses on preventing new HIV infections among women and girls, promoting equal access to HIV care and treatment, accelerating microbicides research, protecting women’s property and inheritance rights, and reducing violence against women. For each issue, the Global Coalition works through a convening agency to raise awareness and promote action. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is the convening agency for the realization of women’s and girls’ property and inheritance rights. This bulletin is based on research, undertaken for ICRW by Dr. Richard Strickland, examining the linkages between women’s property rights and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
Research and intervention strategies are just beginning to consider the role that women’s property ownership and inheritance rights might play in potentially breaking the cycle of HIV/AIDS and poverty. There is growing evidence to suggest that where women’s property and inheritance rights are upheld, women acting as heads and/or primary caregivers of HIV/AIDS-affected households are better able to manage the impact of AIDS. Additionally, preliminary evidence indicates that such rights may help prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS by promoting women’s economic security and empowerment, thereby reducing their vulnerability to domestic violence, unsafe sex, and other AIDS-related risk factors.
Obstacles to Women’s Property Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa
In sub-Saharan Africa, women are adversely affected by acute discrimination in matters of property and inheritance, and they suffer disproportionately from the effects of discriminatory and oppressive laws, customs, and traditions regarding access to and control of housing and land (COHRE 2003). This can be attributed to a range of legal, institutional, and socio-economic factors (UN-HABITAT 2002; Walker 2002; Human Rights Watch 2003b).
Legal issues may include patriarchal laws and traditions that, in effect, deny women the ability to own and inherit land. Additionally, the relationship between traditional or customary law and statutory or de jure law may allow for gaps in implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of those laws that do recognize women’s equal rights to tenure. These gaps may be exacerbated by women’s lack of awareness of their rights.
Institutional factors such as cumbersome regulatory frameworks, costly procedures, lack of information, and corruption can undermine women’s ability to claim their rights, especially where women are underrepresented in structures of local and national governance and their needs and perspectives are inadequately incorporated into policies and programs.
Socio-economic factors affecting women’s secure tenure include poverty, urbanization, domestic violence, and natural and human-made disasters. As many as 41 percent of female-headed households live below local poverty levels and lack resources to buy land or property or develop land allocated to them (UN-HABITAT 2002). Women lacking rights to rural land may migrate to urban areas in hopes of securing property there, though often with tenuous results. Violence against women is sometimes used to threaten their eviction during family disputes or to break their claim to family property upon the death of the spouse (associated with the phenomenon of property grabbing). Further complicating the picture, a variety of tenure systems, legally or customarily defined, establish how property rights and the associated responsibilities and restraints concerning property are to be distributed within societies.
...The Importance of Property Rights
Throughout the world, ownership of land, housing, and other property provides direct and indirect benefits including a secure place to live, the means to a livelihood, and a measure of wealth or capital by which additional economic resources can be leveraged (land can serve as collateral for credit, for instance). Land has long been recognized as a primary source of wealth, social status, and power, providing the basis for shelter, food, and economic activities. Access to resources such as water and to services such as sanitation and electricity, as well as the ability to make long-term investments in land and housing, are often conditioned by access to land rights (FAO 2002).
... HIV/AIDS-affected households that enjoy rights to land and property are better-positioned to cope, as they have a stable, secure environment in which to provide care as well as a resource base that can generate much needed income to help compensate for lost wages of an ill person or a caregiver who forgoes a wage-earning job, and to cover various AIDS-related costs.
Unfortunately, the benefits of land ownership that can help mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS often are simply not available to women in sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, title deeds to land or house are normally issued to male heads of household, leaving women with a lack of secure tenure in case of divorce from or death of their husband. This may lead them to endure an abusive relationship or infidelity to safeguard their access to property through their husband, rather than seeking a divorce. Efforts to promote joint titling are underway in many countries, though the practical effects of the joint title have yet to be thoroughly tested or assessed.
If widowed, women may be victimized by others (such as in-laws and their relatives) through manipulative decision-making that denies rightful inheritance. They may be forced to forfeit their assets, including their land and house, to relatives of the deceased spouse through customary practices involving property grabbing or asset stripping. Such practices, fueled increasingly by the stigma and discrimination commonly experienced by survivors of AIDS victims, leave affected households destitute and more vulnerable to further consequences of HIV/AIDS (Drimie 2002a; FAO 2003; Human Rights Watch
2003a)...
Protecting Women's Property and Land Rights to Protect Families in AIDS-affected Communities
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2004/38247/index.html
International Women's Day 2004 Focuses on Women and HIV/AIDS
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Rome
March 8, 2004
Protecting the property and land tenure rights of women in AIDS-ravaged parts of Africa is vital to prevent rural households slipping into a spiral of poverty.
Losing land or property can unravel the whole fabric of a family, limiting access to safe, inexpensive and nutritious food and forcing children out of school and into employment.
"Family and community structures crumble in the wake of HIV/AIDS. Already facing poverty, the needs of many households become more acute and assets -- like land, property and tools -- become critical resources," says Marcella Villarreal, AIDS focal point at FAO.
In Namibia and Uganda, for example, where land law and property rights are made up of a complex system of overlapping official and traditional law, the rights of women to inherit, own and manage land can fall through the cracks.
Widespread illiteracy and a lack of access to formal court systems, lawyers and other legal resources can make matters worse. FAO is working with local authorities and communities to guarantee that women's rights are protected, by ensuring they have access to sources that explain their rights and the means to defend them.
For many women in AIDS-affected households, losing a husband is the first of many losses she will face. She risks being thrown off her farm, perhaps her only source of income and security, by relatives and robbed of her assets.
A recent FAO study found that over 40 percent of widows had lost cattle and tools, seized by relatives after the male head of household had died.
"HIV/AIDS can tip the balance into poverty," Villarreal adds. "The phenomenon we are witnessing in countries like Namibia, where women widowed and children orphaned by HIV/AIDS are stripped of property and the right to own and farm land, could spread further."
When women lack title to land or housing they have to face a narrower choice of economic options. They may have to deal with homelessness, poverty and violence, contributing both to their and their children's impoverishment. Poverty can also encourage high-risk behaviour such as engaging in unsafe sex for money, housing, food or education.
FAO is working with the Namibian Ministry of Women Affairs and Child-Welfare and the Legal Assistance Centre to raise awareness in rural communities of women's rights and how they can be protected by the law.
About three-quarter's of Namibia's 1.83 million people live in rural areas, and AIDS is the leading cause of death in the country, accounting for 28 percent of all deaths each year.
As a result of this FAO-assisted project, traditional leaders, church leaders, councillors and senior figures in the community are made aware of how land-grabbing can affect families already struggling to cope after the loss of a member to HIV/AIDS.
Volunteers are trained to be able to inform women on how to write a will so that their intent is legally expressed and followed after their death, thereby protecting their children's future. They are also taught about inheritance rights and women's rights in relevant legislation such as the Married Persons Equality Act.
For a woman, owning land or understanding her legal rights over a piece of land she farms also has environmental benefits. Women with secure land tenure are more likely to invest in their land than those without legal land rights, through irrigation, for example, or by farming in a more sustainable manner rather than for short-term gain. According to a recent World Bank report, increased land tenure security increases the value of the land and can greatly increase poor people's wealth, in some cases doubling it
International Women's Day 2004 Focuses on Women and HIV/AIDS
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Rome
March 8, 2004
Protecting the property and land tenure rights of women in AIDS-ravaged parts of Africa is vital to prevent rural households slipping into a spiral of poverty.
Losing land or property can unravel the whole fabric of a family, limiting access to safe, inexpensive and nutritious food and forcing children out of school and into employment.
"Family and community structures crumble in the wake of HIV/AIDS. Already facing poverty, the needs of many households become more acute and assets -- like land, property and tools -- become critical resources," says Marcella Villarreal, AIDS focal point at FAO.
In Namibia and Uganda, for example, where land law and property rights are made up of a complex system of overlapping official and traditional law, the rights of women to inherit, own and manage land can fall through the cracks.
Widespread illiteracy and a lack of access to formal court systems, lawyers and other legal resources can make matters worse. FAO is working with local authorities and communities to guarantee that women's rights are protected, by ensuring they have access to sources that explain their rights and the means to defend them.
For many women in AIDS-affected households, losing a husband is the first of many losses she will face. She risks being thrown off her farm, perhaps her only source of income and security, by relatives and robbed of her assets.
A recent FAO study found that over 40 percent of widows had lost cattle and tools, seized by relatives after the male head of household had died.
"HIV/AIDS can tip the balance into poverty," Villarreal adds. "The phenomenon we are witnessing in countries like Namibia, where women widowed and children orphaned by HIV/AIDS are stripped of property and the right to own and farm land, could spread further."
When women lack title to land or housing they have to face a narrower choice of economic options. They may have to deal with homelessness, poverty and violence, contributing both to their and their children's impoverishment. Poverty can also encourage high-risk behaviour such as engaging in unsafe sex for money, housing, food or education.
FAO is working with the Namibian Ministry of Women Affairs and Child-Welfare and the Legal Assistance Centre to raise awareness in rural communities of women's rights and how they can be protected by the law.
About three-quarter's of Namibia's 1.83 million people live in rural areas, and AIDS is the leading cause of death in the country, accounting for 28 percent of all deaths each year.
As a result of this FAO-assisted project, traditional leaders, church leaders, councillors and senior figures in the community are made aware of how land-grabbing can affect families already struggling to cope after the loss of a member to HIV/AIDS.
Volunteers are trained to be able to inform women on how to write a will so that their intent is legally expressed and followed after their death, thereby protecting their children's future. They are also taught about inheritance rights and women's rights in relevant legislation such as the Married Persons Equality Act.
For a woman, owning land or understanding her legal rights over a piece of land she farms also has environmental benefits. Women with secure land tenure are more likely to invest in their land than those without legal land rights, through irrigation, for example, or by farming in a more sustainable manner rather than for short-term gain. According to a recent World Bank report, increased land tenure security increases the value of the land and can greatly increase poor people's wealth, in some cases doubling it
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
